Senior Risk Investigator - Fraud Incident Management & Partner Response

About the Team

Mercury* is building a complete financial stack for startups, and Risk is how we protect our customers, Mercury, and the broader financial ecosystem. You'll join Fraud Operations, part of the Fraud & Disputes organization. The team investigates and prevents fraud across every Mercury product, and works hand in hand with Risk Strategy, Product, Engineering, Compliance, and our bank partners. Our investigators, Fraud Enablement team, and BPO partners handle the volume. This role makes sure that when something goes wrong, or when a regulator or bank partner asks hard questions, we respond quickly, consistently, and with evidence.

*Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided through Choice Financial Group and Column N.A., Members FDIC.

Role Summary

This is a senior individual contributor role for an investigator who thrives in the hardest, least defined problems in fraud. You will own fraud incident response from detection to postmortem across first-party and third-party fraud, write the memos and responses that our partners and auditors rely on, and be the operational voice of Fraud Operations in partner-bank conversations. You will lead Fraud Operations' response to audit and regulatory observations, and you will help Mercury get ready to operate as a bank, translating what examiners and partner banks expect into the processes, evidence, and documentation our teams need every day.

You don't need to be the deepest domain expert in every fraud typology. You need to be able to hold your own in an incident, ask the right questions, bring the right people in, and turn a messy channel full of data into a clear, defensible, and actionable narrative. You'll work closely with Fraud Investigations and Enablement, Risk Strategy, Compliance, Legal, Partnerships, Product, and Engineering.

What You'll Do

Lead fraud incident management

• Act as incident lead or operational DRI for fraud incidents across all Mercury products, including account takeover, card testing and BIN attacks, mule and ring activity, spikes in fraud behavior, and first-party fraud trends.
• Mobilize incident response, size impact, pull the right people from Fraud Investigations, Enablement, Strategy, Product, and Engineering, and keep everyone aligned on what we know, what we don't, and who owns what.
• Make or tee up decisions with a recommendation attached: containment, customer communication, reimbursement and credit decisions, account actions, and when to escalate.
• Run postmortems and retros for first-party and third-party fraud incidents: root cause, control gaps, remediation owners and dates, and track statuses of each.
• Spot patterns across incidents and turn them into durable fixes in alerts, rules, SOPs, product or tooling change requests, and training instead of one-off responses.

Write the memos and responses partners and auditors rely on

• Draft incident and retro memos for bank partners and internal risk governance: what happened, impact, root cause, controls in place, remediation plan, and timelines.
• Use AI tools to get from raw incident data to a strong first draft quickly, then verify every number and claim against source data before it leaves the team.
• Prepare accurate, concise responses to partner-bank questions, suspicious activity and investigation inquiries, and requests for information.

Coordinate with bank partners

• Be a day-to-day operational point of contact for partner-bank risk, AML, and investigations teams, working alongside Partnerships and Compliance.
• Track open partner requests, commitments, and change-management items, and make sure Fraud Operations responds consistently and on time.
• Bring partner feedback and expectations back to Fraud Operations, Strategy, and Product so controls and processes are built with the partner in mind.

Support audit and exam response for the Fraud domain

• Be Fraud Operations support for audit and regulatory observations: validate accuracy, provide program context, push back where ratings or facts are off, and agree action plans with realistic dates and owners.
• Keep evidence, SOPs, and decision records current so that an audit or exam never becomes a scramble.
• Track issues through governance systems in partnership with Enablement until closure, and confirm the fix worked.

Raise the bar for the team

• Mentor teammates on how to escalate: bring a recommendation and the facts, not just a question.
• Work with Enablement and QC to feed incident learnings into training, scorecards, and playbooks.
• Partner with Strategy and Engineering on tooling and reporting that make incident response faster.

What You'll Bring

• 6+ years of experience in fraud investigations, risk operations, or financial crimes at a bank, fintech, or other regulated financial services company, including hands-on investigation of both first-party and third-party fraud.
• Experience leading or serving as a key operator in fraud incidents or similar high-severity events: sizing impact, driving cross-functional response, making decisions with incomplete information, and running the postmortem.
• Strong writing. A track record of producing incident reports, regulatory or partner-bank memos, or audit responses that were precise, defensible, and read by executives or examiners.
• Working knowledge of how a regulated institution runs, with direct experience working with sponsor or partner banks, regulators, examiners, or auditors.
• Solid understanding of US payment rails and fraud typologies, such as ACH, wires, checks, cards, account takeover, mule accounts, and synthetic or first-party fraud.
• Comfort with data: you can pull and interpret volume, loss, and rate data (SQL or dashboard tools), and explain what the numbers mean and where they could mislead.
• Proven ability to influence people who don't report to you and to drive decisions to closure across Operations, Strategy, Product, Engineering, Compliance, and Legal.
• Good judgment on escalation: you bring a recommendation with the facts and make the next decision easier for leaders.
• Experience using AI and automation to synthesize evidence, draft documents, summarize incidents, and keep status reporting current.

Nice to Haves

• Experience with the sponsor-bank or bank-partner side of fraud, such as UAR/SAR support, Reg E error resolution, or card network and NACHA rules.
• Experience with BPO or outsourced operations.
• Familiarity with incident management tooling and practices (severity levels, incident command, written postmortems).
• Continuous improvement or project management background.
• Experience in a high-growth fintech environment.

Mercury values diversity & belonging and is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. All individuals seeking employment at Mercury are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, veteran status, gender identity, sexual orientation, or any other legally protected characteristic. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations throughout the recruitment process for applicants with disabilities or special needs. If you need assistance, or an accommodation, please let your recruiter know once you are contacted about a role.

#LI-AR1

Total Rewards
The total rewards package at Mercury includes base salary, equity (stock options/RSUs), and benefits.

Our salary and equity ranges are highly competitive within the SaaS and fintech industry and are updated regularly using the most reliable compensation survey data for our industry. New hire offers are made based on a candidate’s experience, expertise, geographic location, and internal pay equity relative to peers.

Our target new hire base salary ranges for this role are the following:

US employees in New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, or the San Francisco Bay Area: $154,200—$192,800 USD US employees outside of New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, or the San Francisco Bay Area: $138,800—$173,500 USD